Secretary-Boss Flap: A Hollywood Courtroom Story

Depending on whom you believe, movie producer Don Simpson of “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop” fame may be a nightmare boss who used cocaine in the office, forced his secretary to make his dates with prostitutes, and screamed at the secretary for the least misstep, real or imagined.

Or Monica Harmon, the secretary in question, may simply be a vengeful ex-employee who rifled her boss’s files, then spread “false and malicious” gossip to squeeze money from Simpson and his partner Jerry Bruckheimer.

Either way, something may have been seriously wrong in one of the most important producers’ suites at Paramount Pictures, and the courts will have to sort things out.

In a little-noticed legal move, Harmon last month filed an amended complaint with the Los Angeles Superior Court, expanding an emotional distress suit she had filed against Simpson and Bruckheimer in October of 1988. The earlier distress suit had been dismissed by the court as being more properly a workers compensation matter along with other grounds.

The new complaint, which also names Paramount as a defendant, alleges that Simpson regularly insulted Harmon during her 21-month tenure as his executive secretary in 1986 and 1987, calling her various ugly names, the least obscene of which appears to have been “garbage brain.” According to the complaint--which doesn’t accuse Bruckheimer of directly committing such acts, even though he is named as a defendant--Simpson was often “either drunk or under the influence of drugs” when he committed the abuse.

Still worse, the complaint alleges, Simpson occasionally ordered Harmon to clean up traces of cocaine she claims he had brought into the producers’ Paramount office. And he supposedly topped off her duties with “the task of keeping and maintaining a list of prostitutes,” from which she was expected to schedule appointments “for their services.”

Simpson, Bruckheimer and Paramount haven’t filed a formal answer to the allegations yet. But attorney Robert Chapman, who represents the producers in the case, says the producers flatly “deny all of her allegations.” Chapman particularly maintains that Harmon had no actual knowledge of drug or prostitute involvement by Simpson.

After Harmon filed the initial distress suit--which sought damages of at least $2.5 million, but didn’t explicitly mention drugs or prostitutes--the producers filed a cross-complaint against the ex-secretary and her attorney, Charles Mathews.

An assistant to Mathews and his partner, William D. Evans, say the pair declined comment.

The cross-complaint seeks at least $5 million in damages. It accuses the pair of defamation, based partially on the attorney’s earlier statement to a Los Angeles Herald Examiner columnist that cocaine would figure in the case, and claims that Harmon invaded the producers’s privacy by searching wastebaskets and files for confidential documents that could be used to “exact money” from them.

Whatever the truth of all the allegations, the resulting case may provide a glimpse inside a fast-track Hollywood executive suite--a world that is usually shielded from outsiders by rules of silence.

Simpson is one of the hardest players in Hollywood. The 43-year-old producer has made a public point of driving the fast cars and living the fast life that are the trademark of his hit movies.

A 1985 Esquire Magazine profile of the producer described him as “arrogant” and “insulting,” but attributed the behavior at least in part to his peculiar brand of honesty. As Esquire quoted Simpson, who is a former Paramount production executive: “If someone had what I considered to be a stupid idea, I would say, ‘That’s a stupid idea, and get out of my office.’ ”

Apparently, Harmon is no angel either. Once an aspiring actress and model, who claimed in court papers to have once worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, the 34-year-old secretary conceded in a sworn deposition that she had used cocaine several times during her tenure with Simpson and Bruckheimer. Excerpts of her private diary, filed in court, also reveal that she was capable of language every bit as colorful as Simpson’s.

Attacking her claims that Simpson had “exposed” her to pornographic materials, including a lewd videotape, Simpson/Bruckheimer co-counsel Bert Fields elicited acknowledgement from Harmon in the deposition that she had rented sexually explicit tapes for home viewing, had been to Chippendale’s night club a couple of times, and had even helped recruit a male stripper for a Simpson/Bruckheimer staff party.

Many of Harmon’s claims may raise questions about Simpson’s conduct--and about Paramount’s monitoring of the way a producer under contract to the studio treated clerical employees who are, according to the various court filings, on the Paramount payroll.

Harmon, in her deposition, said she never explicitly told Paramount managers about Simpson’s alleged cocaine use. “I was afraid to say anything to anybody,” she maintained. But she did claim, on at least four occasions, to have complained to studio personnel--without any resulting change in office conditions--about abusive behavior, and what she described as “illegal and immoral” demands upon her.

A Paramount spokeswoman says company policy prohibits comment on pending litigation. Harmon received other temporary assignments at the studio after October, 1987, when her job with Simpson terminated. (She says she was fired. Simpson in court documents disputes the claim.)

If Harmon is correct, her duties included not just booking “hookers” for Simpson--her detailed account names several of the women--but other extras, like finding a traffic school that would issue Simpson, who had gotten a speeding ticket, a certificate of attendance without his actually attending.

When things went wrong (for instance, said Harmon in court documents, when Simpson suspected her of substituting whole milk for nonfat in his coffee), the producer threw things at her, or heaped on the insults. By her account, one of his favorite lines was: “Don’t think. You are not paid to think.”

Simpson and Bruckheimer counter, in their cross-complaint, that Harmon benefited from a forged evaluation that put a falsely positive light on her performance at Paramount, and that she breached her duties to them “by using cocaine in a manner that adversely affected her conduct in and in connection with her job.”

Either way, Harmon was clearly disillusioned about life in the executive suite. “The job would have been an ideal one, with all the Hollywood glamour that such jobs involved. However, it was spoiled. . . .” she said.